The surging popularity of the smart phone has revived the digital wallet, and now Google, Visa, AmEx, the wireless carriers, and a wide assortment of other providers are jockeying for dominance in this nascent business. By Peter Lucas Still trying to make sense of the digital-wallet landscape? You\'re not alone. …

Compliance has become the goal of PCI, rather than data protection and fraud reduction. It's high time that changed, says Mimi Hart. Occupy PCI. ItÕs time the 99% are heard. The Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) is pernicious, collusive, and inane. ItÕs also ineffective for fraud reduction. Imagine youÕre …

  By Peter Lucas   As check volume dwindles, processors and banks are scrambling to find new ways to leverage the fixed costs of their check-image archives.       It’s no secret that paper-check volume is in steady decline. Thanks to the growing popularity of electronic payments, the number …

  n As with Chase’s previous two EMV deployments, the new Visa card will allow cardholders to sign for transactions rather than enter a PIN, which is a far more common form of authentication for EMV in markets like Europe and Canada where the smart card technology has been rolled …

  By Lauri Giesen   The Durbin Amendment will disrupt merchant acquirers’ long-standing pricing strategies, at least temporarily. How long will the profit-padding opportunities created by Durbin last?       When retailers and their trade associations rallied in support of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act last year, …

  By Jane Adler   The payments industry has made great strides in the area of security, but malicious computer code is still an ever-evolving threat to processors and merchants.       For a restaurant manager, Gary Sipp knows a whole lot about malicious computer software, usually referred to …

  What with the Durbin Amendment taking effect and serious moves in mobile payments, many observers had the feeling that the pace of change in e-payments quickened in 2011. But along with faster change come more problems. Herewith some of the most salient.   By Jim Daly and John Stewart …

  By Karen Epper Hoffman   Next year may be the year of NFC. Then again, it may not be. In the meantime, a slew of startups have some alternatives to think about. Ever hear of Starbucks?       Near-field communication technology (NFC) may have taken a few strides …

Shadows darken the recent economic news, but early third-quarter reports from payments-industry companies paint a much sunnier picture. The big card-issuer and merchant processor Total System Services Inc., for instance, on Tuesday said it was increasing its dividend by 43%, its first dividend increase in five years. Last week, Visa …

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin on Tuesday said he is aware that new Visa and MasterCard interchange schedules will cause some merchants to pay much more in interchange when a consumer uses a debit card from a big bank to pay for small purchases. Durbin said the Federal Reserve Board should …